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Monday, March 13, 2017

On Fiction, History, and Wishing the World Were Otherwise, by Anne Nesbet

I've been
thinking a lot recently about the places where fantasy and history overlap, and
in particular about the strange things that sometimes happen when our stories revise
the past by making the painful parts of history otherwise.

Making
thingsotherwise is a desire very
much at the heart of most writing, of course. It's pretty much the essence of
fiction! In real life, we can't tweak what has already happened--we can't, in
real life, heal wounds inflicted hundreds of years ago by one human being on
another. But in fiction, we can. And so, we do. It strikes me that sometimes I
find these twisted histories satisfying and moving--and sometimes the fictional
mending of the past unsettles me. Loopholes, it seems, can have unintended
side-effects.

I was
recently quite moved by a historical fantasy by H. M. Bouwman, A CRACK IN THE
SEA (2017), which is explicitly about loopholes, about "a crack in the
sea" that allows doomed and desperate people from our world--Africans
thrown overboard from slavers' ships, Vietnamese refugees whose boats are
damaged by pirates and then sink--to travel to another world, where the water is sweet and people are very few.

As Heather
Bouwman explains in her very thoughtful Afterword, the inspiration for this
book was the true, awful history of the Zong,
a ship transporting enslaved human beings across the Atlantic Ocean: in 1781
the men sailing this ship threw 133 living people, men, women, and children, into
the ocean to drown, so that the owners of the ship could collect insurance
payments on the lost "cargo." One of the characters in Bouwman's story,
a girl named Venus, comes from the Zong;
the story of A CRACK IN THE SEA, as the author explains, had its origins in a
longing to change what can't actually be changed:

"And the
Zong is the heart and soul of my book
. . . . [F]or me, the story first became alive with Venus--with my feeling that
she had to escape, somehow, from this
terrible historical fact, this thing from which, in real life, there was no
escape."

From my
perspective, the power of a historical fantasy like A CRACK IN THE SEA depends
very much on the reader knowing that
what he or she is reading is a counter-factual wish, that in real life, these
real people died terribly--and we wish so much that that could be otherwise that we are willing to write
stories in which something else happens. What happens, however, when a student
who doesn't know about the real history of the Zong--or the real history of the Vietnamese refugees in the late
1970s--reads this story? Perhaps the effect is quite different.

Although
Bouwman's story is a fantasy, it does its best to take historical suffering
seriously (as her author's note reminds us), even while opening
magical/historical loopholes. A more extreme example of that approach might be Guillermo Del Toro's film, PAN'S LABYRINTH, in which a brutal tale of the Spanish Civil War gains another dimension through its young heroine's fantastic adventures. How one reads the ending of that film depends on whether one understands the "loophole" (the fantasy kingdom) to have been really, truly, literally real or, more
poignantly (in my opinion), if we take that "loophole" as a
reflection of our human and endlessly thwarted desire for the world to be other
than it is.

Other books go to bleak moments in human history and make them positively blithe, however. Remember the opening pages of J. K. Rowling's THE
PRISONER OF AZKABAN (1999)?

"Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down
the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his
essay, 'Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely
Pointless--discuss.'

The quill
paused at the top of a likely-looking paragraph. Harry pushed his round glasses
up the bridge of his nose, moved his flashlight closer to the book, and read:

'Non-magic people (more commonly known as
Muggles) were particularly afraid of magic in medieval times, but not very good
at recognizing it. On the rare occasion that they did catch a real witch or
wizard, burning had no effect whatsoever. The witch or wizard would perform a
basic Flame-Freezing Charm and then pretend to shriek with pain while enjoying
a gentle, tickling sensation. Indeed, Wendelin the Weird enjoyed being burned
so much that she allowed herself to be caught no less than forty-seven times in
various disguises.'"

This description gave me a bit
of a jolt the first time I read it, to be honest, and now that I've gone back
to find it again, I understand better the reason for the jolt. The account here
is jolly and lighthearted, but on the other side of this fictional lens (on the
other side of this "otherwise") lies some pretty awful historical
stuff, real people whose suffering had nothing at all in common with
"gentle, tickling sensations." It's humorless of me to state the
obvious this way, isn't it? But bear with me: I'm trying to figure out what
makes some fantastical reworkings of history cut deeper than others.
It seems to me that whereas A CRACK IN THE SEA focuses on the poignancy of the
"otherwise" (by keeping the "terrible historical fact"
close by, even while the fantastical loophole is opened), THE PRISONER OF
AZKABAN puts more weight on the loophole, and lets the historical fact float
away.

Have you
read any historical fantasy recently? What effect did it have on you? Have you
encountered stories in which the "wish that the world were otherwise"
particularly moved you? Does a purely humorous approach to rewriting history
unsettle you at all, or do you merely find it refreshing? (A good recent example of
history rewritten for comic effect might be MY LADY JANE, by the witty trio of Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows; in this novel Lady Jane Grey turns out to have been at the heart of various romantic and magical
plots--and gets a happy ending, very unlike her historical fate.)

So perhaps what I am discovering is that I am most satisfied when some trace of the tragic historical fact remains, even if veiled, in the counterfactual rewriting--the tension between fact and wish can then work a very powerful and poignant magic of its own. I
am very curious to hear your thoughts, however--on historical fantasy, on loopholes, and
on wishing the world were otherwise....

14 comments:

I have been thinking about this very issue, and was so glad to come across your post. I'm working on a MG novel -- still in draft form -- about 3 girls in Mexico who find just such a loophole and go back to the time of the fall of the Aztec Empire. The book is a journey for the main character(s), set against the backdrop of history. Research showed me that the Aztec culture had beauty in it - love of children, the first schools, that sort of thing. And from journals it looked like the Spanish may have exaggerated the more terrible aspects of that culture, so unfairly. The Aztecs were destroyed. I was playing with the idea of having a volcano erupt, bringing the awful Cortés to a premature end, and creating an alternate history of sorts. But the human sacrifices and bloody practices of the Aztecs -- even it they might have been exaggerated by the Spanish -- and the violence of the conquest itself, brought me to a halt. Your article has helped. I feel like making things too light and cheerful doesn't do justice to the history, but I don't want to make things too dark. It's hard. I think I agree with you - creating some sort of tension between the actual facts and the wish-fulling elements of the story is where the heart of the story lies. I think we need to treat history with respect, but then go ahead and satisfy that longing for the other, better version of life.

Faye, that sounds like an amazingly complex project you've taken on! I wish you the best of luck with it--the research required must be immense. There is probably no single solution to the problem of balancing fact and fiction; it's a puzzle we have to keep wrestling with, over and over again.

What an interesting blog post, especially that bit about PRISONER OF AZKABAN putting more weight on the loophole. I've read the entire LEVIATHAN trilogy by Scott Westerfeld. I found his alternate WWI fascinating.

Thank you for reminding me of Scott Westerfeld! I read one or two of the LEVIATHAN books, and you remind me I was planning to go back and read more. I don't remember whether there are "happy loopholes" in those books, though. As I recall, they're reasonably dark. Do any specific historical traumas get erased or loopholed?

Much food for thought here. I do think the effect is quite different for students who don't know about the Zong or the Vietnam War. I wonder if, seeing it as fiction, they might believe it was somehow made up by the author? Also, thanks for the insight about THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN. I think your analysis of the "loophole" is spot on.

I would say that A CRACK IN THE SEA keeps us aware of the presence of real history in at least two ways: through the excellent Afterword (which I cite part of above) and also by means of the vividness of the descriptions. The Vietnamese sections of the book, in particular, could be taken from an entirely realistic historical novel: they are so full of details that it is (appropriately) painful to read of the suffering of the people stuck in that damaged little boat, without food or water or shade. It would be interesting to talk to young readers after they finish the book, though, to see whether they read the Afterword and how they sorted out the "history" from the "fantasy" in their own minds.

Thank you for sharing this post, Anne. Deeply philosophical and certainly gives one pause. My Young Inventors Guild books have their core in solving a mystery in the past, with recreating some bits of history along the way. I love that stuff! A quick question about the Harry Potter inclusion: What I took away was the impossible horror of the witch burning since the only ones who suffered were those who were not witches. I felt that JK Rowling's point was more that the job it set out to do was pointless and meaningless since a witch would not only survive such a fate, but could even enjoy it. I didn't feel the weight of the loophole, more the condemnation of the act. Does that make sense? And the plight of those thrown overboard having a happy place to go to feels like a yearning for there to be something good for those who suffered so much...but that feels loophole-heavy to me. I am intrigued that you did not feel this way. Makes me interested in the book! Thanks!

Gosh, Eden, thank you for this immensely thoughtful response. I'm so glad you took the time to explain how you read this Harry Potter passage, because it really illustrates for me how much our interpretations can vary, depending on which words we focus on (and what contexts we bring along to the text). When I look back at the AZKABAN passage after reading your comment, I see that we are probably focusing on different parts of the description. For instance, this bit: "On the rare occasion that they did catch a real witch or wizard, burning had no effect whatsoever." I hardly even noticed the acknowledgement here that burning must have had a great effect on the NON-rare occasions when they caught NON-witches and NON-wizards (in other words, the hard historical fact). Thank you for making me take a second look! I find I am still troubled by the passage overall, though, because (1) the implication that ANY of the historical witch burnings were burning "real witches" makes me flinch, and (2) it's just really hard for me to step aside from the vivid horror of burning people alive to the loophole of "for some magical people, that wasn't unpleasant at all." But I do think it's incredibly important to acknowledge that stories and sentences can be read through many different lenses and interpreted in different ways. I am sure that different readers might also react differently to A CRACK IN THE SEA, for that matter. I came to the story already aware of the horrible history of the Zong and of the sufferings of Vietnamese refugees at sea, so it is hard for me to set aside that knowledge. You should read the book; I would love to hear what you think. (And it is beautifully written.)

This is a such thought provoking post! I need to read A Crack in the Sea. I too had a similar reaction when I read Prisoner of Azkaban. I just read The Inquisitor's Tale last week and I was mesmerized by it and in awe of the author's skill in pulling such an amazing story through beyond the end and into the author's note. I don't want to spoil it for anyone, but one of the characters is based on a much beloved heroine of the Middle Ages. If only she hadn't suffered the end we know she did... I loved the Inquisitor's version of her life much better.

I really enjoyed THE INQUISITOR'S TALE--thank you for reminding me of that one. Your note here makes me want to go reread it, because even though it of course tweaks history quite a bit (is pretty much more "tweak" than "history"), I don't remember being troubled by its loopholes in quite the same way, and I'm curious why that would be!

What a truly horrible event of the Zong. I can't imagine such a terrible event taking place. But I love how you say we can heal history through fiction in a certain way, while unable to heal the real past. Through stories we can make some sense of senseless tragedies and horrors committed and perhaps find some peace through story.

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